From mud to grub

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I’m a little behind as I have only just decided to blog our progress on our allotment.

We took on our new plot (shared between my family and I and a friend) on Good Friday – 21st March 2008. When we took it on it was a bit of a mess, lots of docks, crouch grass and dandelions littering the plot. So we set about digging it over in the evenings and during my youngest little boys nap times! He sleeps in the car while I dig away!!! My older son helps out where he can, he’s only 3 so to be honest he really enjoys digging up worms more than anything!!!!!

The size of our plot is approx 10m wide by 12m long, split into 2 parts, the widest (6×6m) on the left hand side and the other part being 3×6m. We have planned to have the veg on the left and fruit and flowers on the right – ish!

We are now nearly 3 weeks on and we have dug over and weeded almost the whole of the left hand side, and have dug out one of the beds on the right and have planted half of it with sweet peas and the other half will be planted with runner beans. The left hand side is currently part divided up into beds and is currently nurturing some garlic, leeks, spring onions, potatoes, mange tout, pak choi and some asparagus… not bad for only 3 weeks on!!

Whether any of them will actually grow is another matter, given the amount of weeds there were I doubt we’ll have got them all, so not sure how much will grow. This year is all about trial and error, seeing what does ok, well and badly… its the first time we’ve ever done any of this so its very much a learning curve!

Its nice to have a place to escape though and spend some time in my own little world…. especially after looking after the kids all day! Now the evenings are getting lighter I’ll be able to spend more time out there and get more things in the ground!

So here we are, the story so far, 3 weeks in and so far its been very hard work digging digging and more digging, but seeing the first garlic shoots today makes it all very exciting, and hopefully a way to educate the children as they get older too!

I’ll be posting here regularly with updates and all the trial and tribulations we experience along the way – it’ll be an interesting journey!!

Thanks for reading x

• 10 Apr, 2008
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